#motivational speech by Danaeri

[prim-the-living-torture-device]

People I know were talking about stuff like "why do people like my art, it's garbage, is it all out of pity?" so let me set this straight.

When I look at someone's OC drawn sloppily with the Scratch vector tool, I don't like it out of pity. I like it because that's their OC! That's their funny blorbo they made with their own hands!

When I look at someone's beautifully rendered, dramatic painting of a character they love, I like it for the same reason! It's their funny blorbo, made with their own hands!

It's not about skill level. It's never about skill level, because that's not what art should ever truly be about. It's about the feelings, lovingly laid out with the artist's own hands. They MADE that. They made that funny blorbo. They made that landscape. They made that incoherent mass of abstract shapes. They. Made. That.

Who cares how many lines it has, or how neat those lines are? Who cares if the colors are dull, or vivid, or neon and bright enough to burn? They made that. They got themselves together and they Made A Thing that otherwise could have been only a half-formed emotion lasting maybe all of five seconds. But now? Now it's a thing, and they made that thing.

They got their Scratch vector tool and made their funny blorbo. They picked up a tablet and drew a landscape in an art program. They made a funny clay figure with bent and mashed up legs. They got a paintbrush and made an abstract painting. They got out a goddamn hammer and chisel and sculpted a marble sculpture of a naked dude, and now modern society has it in a museum. But they didn't give a damn thought towards where it'd be put in modern day, because it wasn't about the museum.

It was about the marble statue of a naked dude, and everything else came second.

So go on - no one can stop you.

Draw your blorbo. Sculpt your marble naked dude.

[howlsmovinglibrary]

i'm mad bc dany has been doing problematic things for seasons now but a lot of it has been framed heroically and it pisses me off that the showrunners called that "foreshadowing" as if the audience was entirely to blame for thinking dany's "heroic" behaviour meant she was a Good Guy, when they were the ones who framed it that way. then we had to waste time with tyrion + chairs and jon's emo trek into the wilderness when idgaf ??? sansa being queen in the north is the only thing im not mad about

I’m mad for the exact same reasons. There were some genuine flaws in Dany’s personality and her belief in her entitlement to the throne despite evidence of her being terrible at managing a city, that would’ve been good to exploit in a genuine, nuanced, hero-to-villain arc. I’ve always wanted Danaerys to become a villain, and have her problematic shit - which you’re right, the writers always seemed to portray as good and heroic - called out. But the writing was so rushed and disingenuous that it simultaneously undoes all the groundwork that was done for setting up this interpretation of her character, while saying that we should’ve known it from the beginning.

Instead of exposing her as a coloniser who weaponises non-white people to achieve her own ends, the show seemed to imply that her freeing people with initially good intentions was a sign of evil from the very beginning, rather than the hypocrisy of a would-be monarch who uses liberation rhetoric to try and justify the reasons why she should be given power. Tyrion’s whole speech regarding her past actions as symptoms of madness equates a slave rebellion with a million innocent civilian deaths, when those two things are very differe. What’s more, through the way this speech echoed criticisms of appeasement to Hitler in the second world war, this entire section of dialogue implied that a rebellion against slavery was the same kind of “warning sign” as, you know, racially motivated genocide. Meanwhile ‘Savage’ Dothraki and faceless Unsullied are used as the true signifiers that Danaerys has become evil -_-

I could’ve bought an evil Dany whose character was an exploration of imperialism. Instead I was given an evil Dany who is genetically destined for madness ‘because reasons’, whose sexual desire and ambitions for power turns her evil, who is surrounded by evil people of colour, none of whom question her actions while all the good white man start having deep and meaningful man pain and doubt.

And agreed, Sansa’s plotline was one of the only consistant threads of the series and one of few bright spots in this last episode. I eagerly await the ultimate starcrossed enemies-to-lovers fanfiction where her and Yara Greyjoy set up a Northern alliance in Theon’s memory and gradually fall in love despite the bad blood between their families.

[howlsmovinglibrary]

So i noticed you reblogged a lot of got. I followed you bc of your book reviews. I wonder if you read ASOIAF? It'd be cool for you to review it. And also it'd provide me see your stand towards the writing of the last season, & your perspective towards Arya as retconned Night King slayer, the dull (and abusive) romance bw jnerys, jon's character assassination and the lack of his POV, and the show being Dany's show (at the expense of other chars).

Oh wow anon, it’s very rare that I get asked to go off, but I’m more than happy to take you up on the invitation to rant!

In answer to your first question, I have read the first book of ASOIAF, but unfortunately I personally feel George R.R. Martin’s strength is his plotting, and now that the show has kind of unmasked the plot of those first books I find it difficult to slog through his writing style, just because it’s not suited to me. I got to 100 pages from the end where Ned Stark is wondering whether or not he’s gonna die and was like…I kind of know how this ends.

As for my manifold problems with the writing of this last season, I have them, although they don’t seem to be lined up with yours exactly. I have placed this under the keep reading tag, because Long Post. And Spoilers.

Arya

Ok, so as for the Arya plotline, I actually didn’t mind this. I realise it goes against a lot of the material of the books (which I haven’t read), but I think that however much of a retcon it is it makes a lot of logical consistency within Arya’s storyline itself. I was personally getting to the point, with Arya going around Winterfell and not really doing much, of wondering “why did she go to assassin school again?” I think that her getting to kill the Night King validates a lot of her plot arc, whereas before her training was slowly becoming useless and irrelevant to the current situation the writers had put her in - of course this goes out of the window come the last war.

I would actually argue that this decision, bar its illogical and rushed execution, had elements of why I loved GoT’s more established plot twists. You had a strong fantasy genre trope, the Chosen One, in Jon, and then reality intervenes and breaks it. Jon is trying to fight a fucking huge dragon, and is therefore, logically, preoccupied. So someone else gets the kill. I liked that. I mean, it seems like prophecy has just been UTTERLY DISREGARDED in this entire season rather than twisted or subverted, so I guess if we’re feeling particularly generous (which no one is) it might even be “making a point”.

 And yes, we haven’t seen any of her assassin powers over the course of this season (because the writers are retconning her into a nicer ‘antihero’ and not outright eviscerating psychopath), which makes me wonder why she even has them. But I’m actually ok with her getting the Night King kill.

And I’ll dream of the alternate universe where Arya kills Cersei wearing Jaime’s face, actually utilising her skills, getting her ‘green eyed’ kill, and fulfilling Cersei’s prophecy.

Danaerys

So, I hate Danaerys, but I don’t really agree with your viewpoint of her. I don’t really feel like this became ‘her’ season at all. In fact, I feel like this season was just a lesson in how to gaslight a woman into madness and relegate her entirely from her own fucking story.

I will outright state that, I wanted Danaerys to go Mad Queen. I think her character has had problematic elements from very close to the beginning: regarding her sense of entitlement which is not underpinned by an actual competency in regards to ruling, her idealism, and her tendency as a white character to weaponise the brown people she essentially colonises for her own goals. These are not the reasons D&D give to justify her ‘madness’. In fact, they say she’s always been mad for punishing abusers. It just shows now…because of a bad break up.

Danaerys’ “descent into madness” was so badly written that I get mad just thinking about it. It essentially comprises all the men around her having conversations with each other saying “I think she might go mad”, and then her doing a Bad Thing for no discernable reason. This is 1. BAD WRITING, because SHOW NOT TELL. Also, NARRATIVE CONSISTENCY. If you have to have Tyrion outright narrate what you are retconning as her evil past, which is what he did in the final episode, you have not written a consistent plot. Viewers are not stupid. And 2. It’s just awful in terms of gender. Literally, Dany is a woman who becomes isolated and the men around her pathologise her as mad rather than communicating with her and allowing her the agency to authorise her own existence. It’s like The Yellow Wallpaper. There’s so much gaslighting! Everyone says she’s mad for thinking people will betray her as they betray her in the same breath! Jon says he loves her and then punishes her for desiring him! It’s just absurd. I wanted this to happen and they still fucked it up.

Once her sexual desire is just for her and no longer consumable by the male viewer, because its incestuous, and her ambitions outstrip the men around her, suddenly she’s evil. 

And do not get me started on all the awful racial connotations of her story a) being fuelled by the pointless fridging of the only named black woman and b) being utterly endorsed by all the people of colour within the show unquestioningly while all the ‘good’ white men suddenly have their doubts. The way Dothraki war cries were basically used as background music to signify evil savagery made me sick. They literally weaponised race as a way of connoting fear and evil. The fact that her “evil speech” was basically a straw feminist recycling of her liberation rhetoric in a way to condemn all her thoroughly understandable and initially intentions from the very beginning was just a way to validate every Incel’s fear about SJW discourse. Instead of, I don’t know, CRITICISING HER AS A COLONISER. Maybe unveiling her hypocrisy? Nope! All black people are evil and will never question orders because they have been consistently stripped of their humanity! They are a faceless army of non-whites! And oh yes, all women are evil for wanting to enact violence on those who want to abuse them!

Honestly, I think this season of the show has been as much at the expense of her character as anyone else’s. Because it’s not been written well, or believably, and it feels like a complete reduction of the very real potential she had as a critique of imperialism. She’s just a mad woman. 

Jon

I can’t really talk that much about Jon. I kind of cover it above. I’m not sure if you think Jonaerys is abusive to Dany or to him, I would argue the former because of the gaslighting. 

But I will say, he must’ve taken his refresher course in Stark Honourable Stupidity after actually being competent in Season 7. According to D&D’s logic, if he had simply slept with Dany, a woman he loves, she wouldn’t have gone mad. It’s only in GoT that I can justify incest, but he should’ve taken one for the team. 

And maybe kept secrets better.

Just…the show in general

Really, I’m just so disappointed with the show in general. The plot, like Jaime’s characterisation, is so profoundly circular.

We still have an iron throne. We still have an utterly corrupt council elected through nepotism (although I guess we’re supposed to like them now?) Fuck, we still even have a wall even though ALL THE WHITEWALKERS ARE GONE.

Everything was so rushed and irreverent to the point of incompetency - I mean, everyone has seen the coffee cup. Prophecy and foreshadowing was utterly disregarded (I’ve spared you my Jaime Lannister rant because you didn’t ask), nuance was completely lost. I cannot believe that Cersei’s death was an anticlimax, that she didn’t do anything in that final battle but shed a manly tear, had barely any lines of dialogue despite the fact that she is one of the strongest characters of the entire series. And yet EURON GREYJOY got a triumphant death. It is so disingenuous. I really don’t think the fanbase would’ve been that hard to please but it seems like everything was denied us in the name of ‘subverting expectations’.

And however well shot the battle scenes were, I found it profoundly boring because there was no real motivation to drive the action. It was just screaming, and death, and oh yes some gratuitous rape because that’s what every viewer is here for, right?! I watch Game of Thrones for the character intrigue, not the violence or the blatant misunderstanding of what “authentic medievalism” entails. The fact that I watched the finale of my favourite show and did not cry once - me, who cried four times in a single Critical Role episode - is just a testament to how hollow and heartless the writing became.